Oliver Meredith Boone Bulman, 20 May 1902 - 18 February 1974

Abstract

Oliver Meredith Boone Bulman, who died on 18 February 1974 at his home in Cambridge, was born on 20 May 1902 at Wandsworth, the second of three children of Henry Herbert Bulman, R.B.A. (1871-1928), and his wife, Beatrice Elizabeth Boone (1870-1950). The Bulmans were a Cumberland family and the Boones had come from Staffordshire to Kent. Henry Bulman was born at Carlisle and took his art training in Antwerp and London. Against a trend of the times, he developed a strongly naturalistic style in working, particularly in watercolour but also in oils, tempera, crayon or pencil. He specially enjoyed painting people in their home surroundings. Portraits by him were exhibited at the Royal Academy and landscape paintings, flower studies and other of his works are to be seen at the Victoria and Albert Museum or in various galleries at home or overseas. There was also artistic skill in Oliver’s mother’s family for her father, W. A. Boone, A.R.C.A., was an art master at King’s School, Canterbury; but of the three Bulman children, it was Oliver who inherited the outstanding graphic ability that he was to use so effectively in making the hundreds of drawings and diagrams that illustrate his papers, books and lectures; some people even collected his ‘doodles’ after committee meetings.